DATA SCIENCE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

The problem:
FAQ at interviews

It might calm your nerves to know that

almost every job seeker struggles. That’s
because data science interview questions
cover a bunch of different topics (data
science is an interdisciplinary field, after all)
and those cheeky interviewers love to throw
you the odd curveball. So here are some of
the FAQ at interviews…
FAQ AT
INTERVIEWS
1. What does data science mean?
2. What are the assumptions of a linear regres-
sion?
3. What is the difference between factor analysis
and cluster analysis?
4. What is an iterator generator?
5. Write down an SQL script to return data from
two tables.
6. Draw graphs relevant to pay-per-click ad-
verts and ticket purchases.
7. How would you explain Random Forest to a
non-technical person?
8. How can you prove an improvement you
introduced to a model is actually working?
9. What is root cause analysis?
FAQ AT
INTERVIEWS
10. Explain K-means.
11. What kind of RDBMS software do you have
experience with? What about non-relational
databases?
12. Supervised learning vs unsupervised learning.
13. What is overfitting and how to fix it?
14. What is the difference between SQL, MySQL
and SQL Server?
15. How would you start cleaning a big dataset?
16. Give examples where a false negative is more
important than a false positive, and vice versa.
17. State some biases that you are likely to en-
counter when cleaning a database.
18. What is a logistic regression?
FAQ AT
INTERVIEWS
It might calm your nerves to know that almost
every job seeker struggles. That’s because data
science interview questions cover a bunch of
different topics (data science is an interdisciplinary
field, after all) and those cheeky interviewers love
to throw you the odd curveball.
The first step to hitting those curveballs out of the
park is to see them coming, and to see them
coming you’ve got to be confident about the rest
of your game.
So, you must do your homework! An interviewer
can spot someone who hasn’t from a mile away,
but you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that
already though, would you?
ANSWERING
DATA SCIENCE
QUESTIONS
There are plenty of articles out there that will give
you all the example answers you could hope for
and yes, technical questions will come up. But to
remember one hundred-odd different examples
would only serve to confuse you more, plus what
if a question comes up you didn’t study for?

We want to take you through the interview

typology. Show you what data science
interview questions are made of and what the
interviewers are looking for.
CONTENTS
LET’S BREAK THINGS DOWN

1. Technical questions
1.1 Mathematics
1.2 Statistics
1.3 Coding
1.4 Machine Learning

2. Practical experience questions

3. Behavioral questions

4. Scenarios (case study questions)

 TECHNICAL
QUESTIONS
A strong grasp of mathematics, statistics,
coding, and machine learning is a must for
a data scientist.
You are likely to be asked to demonstrate
your hands-on technical skills but prepare
to show off your theoretical techniques,
too!
MATHEMATICS
MATHEMATICS

Mathematics underpins the study of machine

learning, statistics, algorithms, and computer
architecture, among others.

So, applied maths is at the heart of the matter.

Showing a good grasp of mathematics signals to
the interviewer that you could quickly adapt to
those other fields.

Questions like these are to check you have basic

maths skills and shouldn’t be too tricky for you.
MATHEMATICS

Be prepared to answer some quick (mental) maths

questions, such as:

• What is the sum of numbers from 1 to 100?

• A snail falls down a well 50ft deep. Each day it

climbs up 3ft, and each night slides down 1ft.
How many days does it take him to get out?

• You have a 10x10x10 cube, made of one

thousand 1x1x1 cubes. If you remove the outer
layer of this structure, how many cubes will you
have left?
MATHEMATICS

Things become a little more interesting when

encountering puzzle questions that test your
lateral thinking.
Here are some real-life data science interview
questions:

• A race track has 5 lanes. There are 25 horses

and one would like to find out the 3 fastest
horses of those 25. What is the minimum
number of races one would need to conduct to
determine the 3 fastest horses?
MATHEMATICS

• Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at

night. Unfortunately, they have a single torch
and the bridge is too dangerous to cross
without one. The bridge is only strong enough
to support two people at a time. Not all people
take the same time to cross the bridge. Times
for each person: 1 min, 2 mins, 7 mins and 10
mins. What is the shortest time needed for all
four of them to cross the bridge?
MATHEMATICS

Finally, there are those hard maths problems.

It is unlikely that you’ll be given an equation to

solve, rather you’ll be asked a simply worded
question which requires conceptual preparation to
answer.

Furthermore, it may intertwine with probability

theory, even if it seems it doesn’t.
MATHEMATICS

Some examples are:

• Consider an extension of rock, paper, scissors

where there are N options instead of 3 options.
For what values of N is it possible to construct a
fair game, whereby ‘fair’ we mean that for any
move that a player plays there are an equal
number of moves that beat it or lose to it?
• In a country in which people only want boys,
every family continues to have children until
they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have
another child. If they have a boy, they stop.
What is the proportion of boys to girls in the
country?
STATISTICS
 STATISTICS

Did you know, data Scientists were once called

statisticians? The two professions aren’t one and
the same, but many data scientists have finished a
statistics degree.

And that’s no wonder! Statistics is one of the

‘founding fathers’ of data science.

Logically, you will be tested on your ability to

reason statistically. Even if theoretical knowledge
isn’t your strongest suit, you need to use precise
technical language.
 STATISTICS

Consider the following question:

What is the difference between false positive and

false negative?

It seems that you need to provide some textbook

definitions…Got you! Nobody wants to hear
generic theory; it’s boring and you will blend in
with the crowd.

Employers will want you to identify situations

where you can implement the theory.
 STATISTICS

While still talking statistics, what are some other

questions that may pop up?

• What is the null hypothesis and how do we

state it?
• How would you explain a linear regression to a
business executive?
• Tell me what heteroskedasticity is and how to
solve it.
 STATISTICS

• What’s the Central Limit Theorem and what are

its practical implications?
• How do you find the correlation between a
categorical variable and a continuous variable?
• Explain p-value. Present it as if talking to a
client.
• What do you understand by statistical power
and how do you calculate it?
• Please explain the differences between
overfitting and underfitting.
• Explain what cross-validation is. How and why is
it used?
 STATISTICS

Did you think those last two are machine learning

questions? Well spotted, now we see that ML
overlaps with statistical concepts!

• Could you give examples of data that does not

have a Gaussian distribution, nor log-normal?

• Explain bootstrapping as if you’re talking to a

non-technical person.

• State some biases that you are likely to

encounter when cleaning a database.
CODING
CODING

Every data scientist needs a certain amount of

programming knowledge. You don’t have to be
a pro, but employers will want to see that you
have a decent grip on it and have the potential
for rapid improvement.

Python, R, and SQL are the bread-and-butter

programming languages in data science.

Questions about these three staples should not

come as surprise.
CODING
R

• How are missing values and impossible values

represented in R?
• What is the difference between lapply and
sapply?
• How do you merge two data frames in R?
• What is the command used to store R objects in
a file?
• How can you split a continuous variable into
different groups/ranks in R?
• Please explain three key differences between
Python and R.
CODING
Python

• Which Python library would you prefer to use

for Data wrangling?
• How can you build a simple logistic regression
in Python?
• What’s the shortest way open a text file in
Python?
• Have you done web scraping in Python? How
can you do that?
• Please explain what is a ‘pass’ in Python.
• Please explain how one can perform pattern
matching in Python.
• What tool would you use to find bugs?
• What’s your preferred library for plotting in
Python: Seaborn or Matplotlib?
CODING
SQL

• You have a table called with Cust_ID,

Order_Date, Order_ID, Tran_Amt. How would
you select the top 100 customers with the
highest spend over a year-long period?
• Describe the different parts of an SQL query.
• What is the difference between UNION and
UNION ALL?
• Write down a SQL script to return data from
two tables.
• Tell me the difference between a primary key
and a unique key.
• What is the difference between SQL, MySQL
and SQL Server?
MACHINE
LEARNING
 A familiarity with machine learning
methodologies is essential for every
aspiring data scientist.

You should be prepared to explain

key concepts in a nutshell.

It’s quite possible that the interviewer

will outline a prediction problem and
ask you to come up with algorithms.

With the algorithms, expect to touch

upon commonly observed problems
and their fixes.

MACHINE LEARNING
 Check out the following machine
learning questions we’ve picked for
you:

• What is the difference between

supervised and unsupervised
machine learning?
• How would you deal with an
imbalanced dataset?
• How do you ensure you are not
overfitting with a model?
• What approaches would you use
to evaluate the prediction accuracy
of a logistics regression model?
• How do you deal with sparse
data?
MACHINE LEARNING • Could you explain the Bias-
Variance trade-off?
 Additionally, you may stumble upon
way too specific or way too vague
questions such as:

• Explain the difference between

Gaussian Mixture Model and K-
Means.
• Tell me about a machine learning
project you admire.

MACHINE LEARNING
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
QUESTIONS
PRACTICAL
EXPERIENCE Qs

Technical questions are important, and a data

scientist needs to know the answers and how to put
them into practice.

There are countless data science questions and an

interviewer is not going to waste time asking dozens
of questions to gauge whether you are the
candidate for them. Instead, why not ask you to give
your experience.
PRACTICAL
EXPERIENCE Qs

These are practical experience questions, designed

to shed light on your pace of work, experiences, and
habits.

To avoid having to sift through your back catalogue

of experiences on the spot, have in mind a few
experiences that are versatile – Ones that exemplify
different skills based on the question.
PRACTICAL
EXPERIENCE Qs

Let’s give you taste of those:

• Summarize your experience.

• Tell me about your first data science pet project.
• How do you keep up with the news about
politics, economics, and business? What about
data science?
• So, Python is your preferred programming
language. What experience do you have with R?
Tell me what you have done with that.
PRACTICAL
EXPERIENCE Qs

Of course, you can get it vice-versa:

• So, R is your preferred programming

language. What experience do you have
with Python? Tell me what you have done
with that.
• Do you have experience in Tableau?
• What kind of RDBMS software do you have
experience with?
BEHAVIORAL
QUESTIONS
 BEHAVIORAL Qs
Like any other job interview, employers are
interested in how you handle workplace situations,
how you work in a team and whether you are a
good fit for the company.

Behavioural questions can be asked indirectly, for

example, the interviewer may pose broad
questions about your motivation or the tasks you
enjoy.

Certainly, there is not a right answer here. The

intent is to judge your past responses as they can
accurately predict future behavior.

Let’s see an example: Describe a situation when you

faced a conflict while working on a team project.
 BEHAVIORAL Qs
Instead of asking hypothetical questions (“How will
you deal with…”), the interviewer is hoping to elicit
a more meaningful response by pushing you to
chat about a real-life past event. The interviewer
will be looking for four things in your story:

Situation: What was the context? (devote around 10% of

the answer time)
Task: What needed to be done? (devote around 10% of
the answer time)
Action: What did you do? (devote around 70% of the
answer time)
Results: What were the accomplishments? (devote
around 10% of the answer time)

Also known as the STAR technique, these steps will help you present your
answers in a clear and succinct fashion.
 BEHAVIORAL Qs
Dying for examples? Here you go:

• Please describe a data science project you

worked on (Yes! It overlaps with the
‘practical experience category!)
• Tell me about a situation when you had to
balance competing priorities.
• Describe a time when you managed to
persuade someone to see things your way.
• Describe a time when you were bored at
work. How did you motivate yourself?
• when you failed to meet a deadline.
• Our team is brand new and is under-
financed. We have no standard procedures
or training, and everything is ad-hoc. How
would you go about this situation?
CASE STUDY
QUESTIONS
CASE STUDY Qs

The purpose of scenarios (case study questions) is

to test your experience in various data science
fields.

Case study questions will likely look for skills

outside of the technical toolkit.

For instance, they may be looking for logical

reasoning or business understanding. It’s
important for you to demonstrate structured
thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving skills.
After all, you can’t be a good data scientist if you
cannot identify the underlying problems.
CASE STUDY Qs

Let’s see how this works:

• The sales department has increased the selling

price of all items by 5%. There are 10 items, all
with different price tags. Before the price
increase, gross revenue was $500,000 with an
average selling price of $1. After the price
increase, gross revenue was $505,000, with an
average selling price of $0.95. Why hasn’t the
price increase had the desired impact of
increasing revenue and average selling price?
CASE STUDY Qs

You can be also given market sizing questions,

called guestimates by some, a term that sounds
like you just need to take a stab in the dark, which
is just not the case.

While reaching a conclusion does require a degree

of guesswork and estimation, the process of how
you use them is difficult and requires rigid logic.
CASE STUDY Qs

There is not a single correct answer to questions

like these and chances are that the interviewer
doesn’t know the exact answer, either. Here is an
example:

• How many SUV’s in the parking lot downstairs?

How many ping-pong balls can fit into this
room?
 Excellent, now consider our typology as the starting
point in your interview prep.

However, we have only scratched the surface when it

comes to examples of data science interview questions
An interview is a you may encounter. The industry is booming and as

dialogue, such, companies are constantly adapting their interview

sessions (what may be a common question today may
be one hardly asked in 2 years).
not a written test!
Data science interview questions vary in their
peculiarities, but the types of questions remain the
same, so having a base knowledge of these types with a
good amount of preparation will allow you to logically
tackle any question the interviewer has up her sleeve.
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Good luck!